Shining Light on the Shadow
BY ZACHARY FEDER
One of the great unacknowledged shadows that plagues modern men, and by association modern women and society as a whole, is embedded within the secretive, often-unconscious act of male masturbation. Your relationship to this topic may be reflected by the amount of anxiety, relief, or projection you experience from reading this. It’s not a subject we enjoy talking about. In fact, it is one of our last taboos. And for good reason.
First, I think we can all agree that there’s nothing empowering about cowering in a corner of your house several times a week like a dribbling medieval peasant frantically trying to strangle a weasel. It’s just not a good look. There’s also the side effect that masturbation, if done quickly (which it usually is), trains us to ejaculate prematurely. Just what everyone wants more of.
And what of the advice about jerking off before a date? Really? What towering intellect came up with the idea of shooting all your unagi into an old sock before meeting an expression of the divine feminine? What if you make it to home base? The release of your cosmic life force should have the power of a samurai sword chopping off the tip of a fire hydrant. It should explode with the force of Old Faithful. It should be an event. Do not jerk off before a date.
What’s really going on here is far more disempowering than simply losing control of your chi in the presence of a powerful woman when you should be transmuting it back up your spine and shooting it out of your third eye like a boss. What this is really about is where modern man has been trained to go when masturbating, that from a young age we have been indoctrinated to focus our awareness onto a specific, secretive place inside our psyche that is often contrary to what a fulfilling sexual experience looks like.
What I’m talking about is not your everyday “wank bank,” but your secret vault, your concrete bunker—that place that all men exposed to advertising, television, film, celebrity magazines, and pornography have been unconsciously conditioned to desire when getting off. Simply put, that lust for sexual violence or any other variation of the classic “dominator hierarchy” that couldn’t be further from the kind of healthy sex life that most of us want.
While most of us know this toxic place exists, few of us ever turn and face it, so it grows until it eventually spills over into our public life like an Elliot Spitzer, Dominique Strauss Khan, Anthony Wiener, or any of the other public examples we see every day.
In the midst of a mental health epidemic, let’s consider how we teach young men to explore their sexuality in a way that doesn’t simply hardwire some version of abusive toxicity within them, so instead they can begin to set themselves up for a healthy sex life. Because there’s nothing worse than having a nice young chap with good intentions give off a lecherous vibe because for a few minutes a dozen times a week, he trains his brain to wire around some twisted power struggle simply because he hasn’t been offered a healthy alternative. But for the most part, we’re still too immature to even talk about it.
So what does this really come down to? Sexual slavery. If you’re a man (with the exception of those with a testosterone deficiency) then you know exactly what I’m talking about. Because all men, in spite of our best intentions, have felt completely at the mercy of our libidos. In an age where emphasis is finally being placed upon the Feminine, it can be a curious thing to suggest that men need to be understood for the biological pressure we’re put under by the heavyweight champion of the chemical world: testosterone, Mr. T., aka The Dark Lord Ballsdemort.
But for those without a pair, trust me, Ballsdemort has the power to instantly put your higher functions into a chokehold. To cast a spell that forces you into believing that you have no choice but to go to your office bathroom on a Tuesday morning and beat one out simply because you’ve never been shown another way. For men all over the world, this constant struggle isn’t a joke—it’s life.
So if this applies, and you’re ready to jailbreak yourself, then I offer a few suggestions:
Identify where you go in your darkest fantasies.
But don’t just stick your big toe in or glance at them cowardly from a distance. Dive into them fully. If they’re unconscious then you may have to force yourself to go there with your eyes wide open, which may inflame the part of you that is outraged in the face of your shadow. Yeah, it’s a Gordian knot. But until you understand them clearly, then no matter how painful they are, you won’t be able to identify the underlying need that’s asking to be resolved.
Check yourself out in the act.
Take a moment to really engage your pattern, really commit to going to that secret place physically, emotionally, psychologically, and then right in the middle of it, check yourself out in the mirror. It’s like having a bucket of cold water thrown over you while being hit by lightning. It’s humiliating and allows the spell of your illusion of what you think you’re doing to be momentarily broken. At the very least, it may inspire you to bring some dignity to the act. Think: “The Masturbations of Marcus Aurelius.
Stop it with the celebrities.
They get enough energy as it is without you beaming your first chakra directly into their psychic storage center. More importantly, masturbating over public figures can perpetuate the unconscious belief that your sexual fulfillment will always remain unattainable, always within the realm of individuals you may never meet. Then again, if you’re in a position where you may meet them, then even more reason not to. The last thing you want to do is to walk into a meeting and find yourself shaking hands with someone with the same five digits you beat off to them with.
Quit porn.
Porn is erotic junk food and the greatest example of an unrealistic and (usually) unhealthy expression of sexual fulfillment. So try going cold turkey, and if that’s too difficult, then gradually phase out from full-fledged porn into art photography, then into “normal women” photography. This will help to bring the fantasy back into reality so that your erotic taste buds can rediscover the ecstasy of a fresh salad over the dank lasciviousness of a Big Mac.
Learn to defend yourself against your environment.
You’re being bombarded by sexually provocative images constantly. On every website, magazine, television show, or commercial for cheap plastic razors, you are being aroused by artificially augmented Amazonians shaving their perfectly Photoshopped pins in the buff. The mass media perpetually attempt to turn you on, and as long as you tolerate it, you’re going to remain a Pavlovian dog unconsciously stimulated by every sexual bell that marketers ring. So begin to take stock of your environment and the triggers that you allow into it. Look at your home, your bedroom, your browsing, reading, and television habits. Where are you being stroked unwittingly? Take the Huffington Post. Do you think you’re capable of scrolling down that front page without having your libido jacked by those erotic little thumbnails even if you’re not looking at them? Because you’re not. Your unconscious mind is always aware of your peripheral vision, especially if it contains a cheeky piece of ass and some side boob.
Wake up to the objectification of women, once and for all.
When you’re objectifying a woman, you’re not seeing her as she truly is. You’re not seeing someone who poops twice a day and bleeds for almost a week a month so that a little thing called humanity can perpetuate. You’re not seeing a mother, sister, or daughter. You’re simply seeing an illusion of your own mental conditioning that has been designed solely to give you pleasure. So the next time you see a beautiful woman, just remember that fundamentally, this divine creature is a reflection of the sacred emptiness that gave rise to the entire universe.
More importantly, realize that when you imagine sexually demeaning someone, you’re not getting off. You’re just getting angry. And not because of their sense of entitlement, or because they’re obnoxious, or a corporate lemming, or a New Age elitist, or because you can’t have them. But because your life is painful, and you’re suffering. When you step into sexual unconsciousness, you’re not raising your middle finger at them, you’re raising it to life. To your life. Even to God, or whoever you believe is responsible for creating this cosmic freefall of beauty and horror, where even the simple task of waking up and facing the impossible preciousness of existence, compounded by a global crisis day after agonizing day, is an act of heroism.
Address this, and you will find the solution and not the smoke screen. Because in the end, we can either die to our suffering with escapism and the little death of the orgasm, or with an unflinching awareness and the big death of meditation.
Zachary Feder supports individuals to go to places that scare them for the purpose of healing and developing. He can be reached at [email protected].